


Lies And Flimsy Alilbis

by prouvairablehulk



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, surprise James has a kid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-17 00:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12353457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: Five ways the crew of the Walrus could have met Artemis McGraw (and the one way they did)





	Lies And Flimsy Alilbis

They flee London. 

James dresses himself in clothes from Thomas’ wardrobe so he can take Thomas with him in some capacity, and Miranda wears the kind of jewelry she knows they will be able to sell, and they pack the leather bag full of the things they cannot leave behind, and James negotiates them passage on a ship, and all the while Artemis refuses to speak. She hasn’t spoken a word since James agreed to leave, agreed with Miranda, agreed to take her from the shining Salons in which she was a rising star and deposit her in the horrors of a city that would murder a nine year old child. 

There is a bruise rising around her eye where she tried to fend off the Earl’s men, to keep them away from Thomas. Every time he sees the flash of blue surrounding the green, James wants to be sick. 

Artemis doesn’t speak that first night, nor the next morning, and it isn’t until the sun is setting on that second day that the dam breaks and she yells and screams and punches James in the chest again and again and again, and when she is done with that and she is clutching him and crying, James holds her tight and wonders what it was about Thomas Hamilton that made the McGraws love him so much, love him with the kind of devotion that they did. 

Artemis spends much of the voyage to Nassau in the cabin that they were given, curled up in the window seat the same way she used to curl up on the wide windowsills of James’ tiny London apartment, reading the copy of Meditations that bears Thomas’ handwriting on the flyleaf. James spends the voyage pacing, trying to narrow his plans. Miranda sews - stitching together both new dresses and a new identity for herself. 

They land in Nassau, and James finds them a cottage inland where they can be safe, and there they stay, Miranda Barlow and her ward Artemis, while James becomes something terrifying. 

He returns, four months on, with his first major prize taken, and a copy of Don Quixote for Miranda and Artemis, a proud smile on his face when he opens the door. So it goes, year after year after year, James returning with news of prizes he has taken, and with books. Artemis and Miranda barely leave the house. James is feared across the Caribbean. 

James doesn’t tell anyone about her. He doesn’t say a word about Artemis to anyone. The stories float through Nassau of the woman that Flint has in the interior, of the witchcraft they like to proclaim she performs for him. None of the stories include her ward. The Witch never has an apprentice. As far as James is concerned, Artemis should never be a part of those stories. Artemis is something to be kept safe and away from anything that could cause her harm. The memory of the bruises around her eyes haunt him the same way that Thomas’ face did, the look in Thomas’ eyes when James left him the very last time, the look in Miranda’s every time James goes back to his mistress the sea. 

Artemis doesn’t come to the dock, the night he kills Peter Ashe. But there’s a bonfire burning on the hill leading inland, and Miranda tells him later that there’s a bottle of rum missing and Artemis is wincing when the morning sunlight strikes her eyes. She had her own conclusion to that story. 

Five years after that, and his little girl is not anywhere near as little. It is harder and harder to make sure Artemis is left out of the stories - no one wants to ignore a pretty twenty-five year old with red hair like flame and eyes as green as emeralds who apparently spends a lot of time barefoot and dancing in Mrs Barlow’s vegetable garden or reading in the shade of the fruit trees that border their land. Five years on from Peter’s death, and all there is for James is the schedule and the island and Artemis and Miranda, and John Silver has taken one of those and Charles Vane is threatening to take another, and if Miranda has the truth of it Max is threatening to take the third, and so five years on from Peter’s death James sails with a thief and a crew he barely has command of to capture a treasure he’s unsure exists at the risk of losing the last things he holds dear. 

Artemis, at home in Nassau, hears Richard Guthrie speaking to her Aunt Miranda, and feels true terror for the first time since she watched two men drag her Uncle away while he made Miranda promise, made Artemis promise that they would all look after each other. She sits in front of the one mirror in their home and braids her hair and hopes against hope that her Father’s crew never find the letter her Aunt must have penned. She knows it’s useless, but maybe the same good luck that has brought him back to her from voyage after voyage will bring him home to her, safe and sound, once more. 

In the middle of a storm as they run from the British, James asks Billy what was in Miranda's letter, and Billy shouts and slips and falls without ever truly answering. James knows it’s something that caused concern, but that doesn’t translate into knowing what Miranda said, what she asked for, what Billy, and therefore the crew, knows now. He tries to keep an ear to the ground, tries to know what passes in whispers among the men, but he’s never been popular in their circles, nor has he ever had an informant who wasn’t named Billy Bones. Gates won’t tell him what the men know of the letter, but Silver, when pressed about the matter while he writes out the last of the schedule that is keeping him alive, water dripping off his curls and onto the parchment, relays that they speak of Flint’s escape plan, orchestrated by his Witch, something incorporeal about pardons and betrayals. 

James puts it out of his mind. His prize is within his reach, given that Silver’s coordinates match up to his reconnaissance. His men are sated with the promise of wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Once they’ve caught this prize, he can retire into the interior, can return to reading Homer with Artemis and bickering with Miranda, can keep the island he’s been building in the image of Thomas’ plan away from the country that robbed him of everything he held dear other than those two women. One more fight, he tells himself. One more and it can all be over. It’s that mantra that is echoing through his head when Gates tells him he won’t take on a Man ‘o War, that mantra, when he pulls his oldest friend flush against his body and snaps his neck, that mantra ringing in his ears when Silver helps him lie, when they hail the ship, when he gives the order to fire. That mantra, when the cocking of a pistol rings in the silence and the crew uses Dufresne’s voice to refuse to follow him.

“There’s a pardon waiting for you in Boston.” says Dufresne. “You would abandon us like that? Leave us, in favor of your witch?” 

James flinches at that, because instantly he knows too clearly what words Miranda committed to paper in that letter, what she used to persuade anyone who read it that James was capable of remorse and rehabilitation in a civilized colony. 

“I thought her name was Barlow,” says Dufresne, and James squeezes his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to look at anyone once his sentence ends. “Not McGraw.” 

“It is.” says James, eyes still closed. “The woman you refer to as my witch is Miranda Barlow.”

“Then who the fuck is Artemis McGraw?” 

James runs a hand across his face, only serving to rub the dirt and blood in further, smudging it farther. 

“One of the two reasons I have for being the man I am.” says James. He knows they will not let him obfuscate, but he will try to keep her true nature out of the discussion for as long as he can. 

“Who is she to you?” demands De Groot. “Your wife?”

That startles a laugh out of James. He’s been scouring the collected crew, and cannot see Silver among them. Perhaps, if he stalls - he could distract them with the truth for long enough that Silver’s devotion to the money might allow the plan to proceed. 

“No.” he says, and nothing more. Make them ask again - make them press - give Silver time. 

“Then who is she?” presses Dufresne. 

“My daughter.” says James, as though he does not want to admit it. “Artemis McGraw is my daughter.” 

There’s a collective intake of breath among the men, as though everything has shifted under their feet. 

“You would take a pardon for the sake of your daughter?” asks De Groot, voice a little softer. 

“I would not take a pardon for anyone. Artemis is a reason to not take a pardon more than she is to take one.” James tells him, thinking of the anger Artemis still bore him for their actions regarding Thomas fate, the fury that would shake her whenever it came up in argument. She’s there with him in that moment, as he remembers her on that fateful night when he burst back into the parlour at the Hamilton house to find Thomas gone and Miranda’s eyes red rimmed, and Artemis curled by the door in a half ball, shaking and with bloodied knuckles and her eyes rimmed with the kind of swollen red that fades to blue and to purple and to green and to yellow. 

“What do you mean?”

“I would never take a pardon due to my own belief, but Artemis - “ starts James, and then he shakes his head. “Once, I took the path of least resistance in order to protect her, over protecting the ideals we held dear. She didn’t speak to me for three days afterward. I shudder to think of what she would do should I take a pardon.”

They’ve been sailing away from the Urca for mere minutes, while this discussion takes place, and then the quiet of the discussion is broken by the shot of a cannon. 

“Sorry,” says Silver, the little shit - the little, greedy, desperate, dependable, shit - “it had to be done.” 

Three days later, stepping off the Man o’ War’s longboat in Nassau, dressed in black leather stolen from the captain’s cabin, captain of his crew once more, James wonders what he will tell her of the confrontation - what he will say to her about the fact that his crew knows her name, knows how much she matters to him. A day and a half later, there she is on his beach, fury in her eyes. 

“Go home.” he tells her, hand clenched tight around her bicep. Hornigold might not know who she was, but he certainly knew who Miranda was, and should the news that there were two of James’ women on the beach got back to James’ crew, there would be a riot. 

“Not until you’ve listened to us!” she says, and presses something into his chest. 

When he looks down, it’s Thomas’ Meditations. Artemis’ eyes are hard. 

“Let us help you.” she says, and then in the upstairs room at Eleanor’s tavern, with Miranda’s hand on her shoulder, she tells him exactly how they can finish modelling the island in Thomas’ image, and he can see it, can see a free and independant Nassau stretching out like a mirage in front of them. 

He takes Artemis down to the beach, to where his crew is waiting, even as Miranda waits at the tavern for Abigail’s arrival. He takes Artemis to the beach, and she sits with him, hidden in the darkness, as he asks Silver to convince his men to fight in the name of a man none of them know exist. Silver promises the men safety and surety and a life free of the yoke, and Artemis smiles a smile Flint knows well. 

“You must introduce me to your Mister Silver.” she says, conspiratorial. James cuts his eyes sideways to look at her. 

“He’s not my anything.” says James, and Artemis raises her eyebrow at him in a fashion only Miranda had ever perfected. 

“That poor man is utterly devoted to you.” says Artemis. “And if you only let me talk to them, we could make all those men that loyal to you.” 

“I do not want you in danger.” says James. 

“I am in danger as long as I am your daughter.” says Artemis. “What is a little more?”

James had always known this day was coming, the day in which the fifteen year old with ideals and a black eye she’d earned trying to keep a Lord from Bedlam resurfaced in a twenty-five year old who had survived ten years in a nation of thieves. 

They enter the barn side by side, Artemis’ arm looped through his, while all the men have their eyes on Silver. As soon as he finishes, Artemis clears her throat. 

“Good evening, gentlemen.” she says, and smiles when she is the focus of the room, comfortable in her command of their attention. “My name is Artemis McGraw.”

“You got a pretty lie for us too?” calls someone from the back of the room. 

“I’ve got a pretty truth.” says Artemis. “Do you want to hear it?” 

“Why the fuck should we listen to a woman?” asks one of the men in the front, someone from Hornigold’s crew. 

“You’ll listen.” says James. “She’s going to tell you exactly how we’ll make sure England never breathes heavily in the direction of this place ever again.” 

“We’re going to take Peter Ashe his daughter back.” says Artemis. “And then I am going to threaten to ruin his reputation unless he helps us.” 

“How on earth could you do that?” says Silver. 

“I was thinking I’d start by walking into the Governor’s Mansion with Abigail and saying something like ‘Hello, Uncle Peter, shall we talk about how well you’ve hidden that you know exactly who Captain Flint is and the fact you were once friends?’. That ought to get him nervous.” 

There’s a sudden susurration of whispers among the men. Artemis waits for it to subside before she continues. 

“And once I’ve done that, I’ll see what I can do about moving the plan forward.”

“What plan?” asks De Groot, suddenly suspicious once again. 

Artemis turns to James with both eyebrows raised. 

“You never told them about my Lord father?” she says, and there’s mischief in her eyes. She hasn’t used that old nickname for Thomas in ten years. 

“I thought she was yours.” says Silver. 

“Oh, I am.” says Artemis, and beams. “Let me tell you a story about a politician named Lord Thomas Hamilton.” 

There’s a beat of nothing, and then every man in the room leans in to listen.


End file.
